Just check off any conditions that you want an email to have for this rule to take effect. When you create a rule using advanced options, the first list will be all the possible conditions. When you check a box at the top, the condition goes into the rule conditions at the bottom. Some other common ones are messages to a specified email (such as a distribution list you are a part of) or if you are the only person in the to line. Some of the most common are when the message is from a certain email address or has a specific keyword in the subject line. Conditions to trigger a ruleĬonditions that trigger a rule can be a lot of things taken from many parts of the email. Let’s dive deeper into these three parts and how to add selections for each part. These parts are conditions that trigger the rule, what happens when those conditions are met, and any exceptions to the rule. Most advanced rules come in 3 parts as opposed to the 2 parts of the quick rules. Then click finish and your quick rule is created.ĭon’t see what you need in the suggested rule? If you click on advanced options, you can make a new rule from all the possible options. When the rule creation box opens, you can easily check off one or more of the suggested rule conditions and actions. Click “create rule” for more suggestions of common conditions and actions or to create your own rule from scratch. Outlook will offer a suggestion for a condition in that email that can trigger the rule. (You can also right click the email itself and then click rules from the drop down options list). Then click rules located in the top options ribbon. When in your Outlook inbox, it’s easiest to have an email that you know will be affected by your rule selected first. How to create a ruleĬreating a rule can be super easy or a little more complex depending on how particular you want the rule to be. There are so many ways to use rules to automate much of your manual organization processes. For example, are you like me and have to open every unread email? Instead, you can make certain emails marked as read and filed in their own folder as soon as they come in. No need to manually sort your emails in to their set folder when rules can do it for you. Rules are an essential part of Outlook organization.

Outlook how to set a rule